Rogue Homme

It is not un­usual to hear about our sport­ing heroes mak­ing it big in the in­ter­na­tional arena and rightly so, con­sid­er­ing the spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion in which Fiji has cap­tured world at­ten­tion by pro­duc­ing, I’m as­sum­ing, one of the high­est per capita in­ter­na­tional level ath­letes. Of­ten when watch­ing the 7s peo­ple could be led to be­lieve that Fiji is play­ing against Fiji! There are, how­ever, many un­sung su­per­stars in­clud­ing mem­bers of our cre­ative in­dus­tries, in par­tic­u­lar fash­ion and life­style pro­fes­sion­als who are mak­ing it big in highly com­pet­i­tive global mar­kets. They are out there where stay­ing ahead of the trend is the only way to stay rel­e­vant and in busi­ness. Ar­rnott Salesi Olssen, who is proudly from Vanu­a­bal­avu in Lau (vasu Tave­uni), has been liv­ing in Syd­ney since 1995 and mak­ing waves as a per­former. He com­peted in the tele­vi­sion singing com­pe­ti­tion Pop Stars (an early in­car­na­tion of the more re­cent Idol and The Voice phe­nomenons) and more re­cently as the mas­ter­mind be­hind lead­ing Aus­tralian men’s fash­ion and life­style dig­i­tal plat­form, Rogue Homme. Rogue Homme is a go to guide and life­style bi­ble for mod­ern ev­ery­day man, with a broad fo­cus on fash­ion and life­style, food and drink, health and fit­ness, elec­tron­ics and gad­gets, travel and events. With a to­tal so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing up­wards of 104,000 peo­ple, Ar­rnott, as its cre­ator and ed­i­tor, has steadily es­tab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion as a taste maker within the Aus­tralian fash­ion and life­style mar­ket. I caught up with Ar­rnott in Syd­ney re­cently to talk about his life since 1995 and what the fu­ture could hold. He said mak­ing it onto the Pop Stars show was scary, ex­cit­ing and eye open­ing and gave him a plat­form and a voice. The tran­si­tion to dig­i­tal me­dia came through his un­der­stand­ing and love of fash­ion and food com­bined with an in­sa­tiable hunger for knowl­edge – which meant friends grav­i­tated to him for ad­vice or info on what was hot or new in Syd­ney. “When peo­ple first be­gun to hear about blog­ging I launched my own called Ar­rnott The Col­lec­tor which grew rapidly. I stopped it a year af­ter start­ing as it fast be­came more then just a per­sonal way of me shar­ing info with friends. “About five years ago I lost 79kgs work­ing out with a friend and trainer Shaun But­ton who now owns pop­u­lar re­cov­ery space, Koa Re­cov­ery. My pub­li­cist en­cour­aged me to restart my blog to of­fer up some­thing else to the me­dia we were speak­ing to. So I thought it through very care­fully what I wanted the site to say and the brand­ing and came up with Rogue Homme. “It was to be a voice for the multi-cul­tured Aus­tralia I lived in and plat­form for ev­ery­one, not just the se­lect few I kept see­ing. When we launched i just took it one step at a time, and last year cel­e­brated five years of growth. “I launched it as a plat­form for the ev­ery­day guy, some­one who wanted to know about fash­ion, food and life but didn’t nec­es­sar­ily buy Men’s Style or GQ. It’s still the same but we’ve now evolved and pro­vide con­tent cre­ation for brands and busi­nesses, run so­cial me­dia and train peo­ple in the art of so­cial me­dia and soon hope to add prod­ucts to the plat­form. “In fu­ture I’d love to do a quar­terly print magazine, some­thing col­lectable and se­lec­tive. Also a tele­vi­sion show or plat­form, to bring a wider voice to the is­land and mul­ti­cul­tural com­mu­nity in Aus­tralia. What do you see your­self do­ing in 10 years?: Hope­fully in­spir­ing a younger gen­er­a­tion of Fi­jian and Pa­cific Is­landers to be em­pow­ered to be cre­ative and strive for ex­cel­lence in ev­ery­thing they do.